Abstract
Herein, phasic icing of part single cells during successful cold start process of PEMFC stacks is experimentally studied considering temperature, gas velocity and cell number; meanwhile, a heat transfer model is developed for stacks to investigate thermal evolution characteristics. The results reveal that temperature difference between end cells and middle cells can be 10 °C, and that for a cell inside may reach 7 °C. For self-starts, no apparent icing phenomenon is observed when PEM stack is successfully started at ≥ −20 °C. Phasic icing occurs commonly at ≤ −30 °C and performance degradation due to icing is less than 0.5%. In a 20-cell stack, when cathode gas channel velocity is 6.2 m/s, phasic icing in middle cells is observed due to uneven flow distribution, which can be avoided by increasing the velocity to 12.4 m/s if velocity is 3.1 m/s or less, cold start fails. Additionally, coolant circuit cannot eliminate endplate effect and phasic icing phenomenon.
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